


Presumed Lost

by Recourse



Series: Book and Candle [3]
Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: Alternative Universe - Dark Fantasy, Alternative Universe - Witches, Body Horror, Depression, F/F, Harpies, Hurt/Comfort, Mental Illness, Suicidal Thoughts, Transformation, Vampires, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-09
Updated: 2016-09-20
Packaged: 2018-08-13 23:53:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 18,287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7990924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Recourse/pseuds/Recourse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arcadia is lost. Rachel is dead. Chloe Price wanders in a dark and twisted landscape, fighting monsters and the virulent corruption that's slowly turning her body monstrous and her mind insane. As she approaches the point of no return, she comes across a single pure soul, determined to bring her back from the brink.</p><p>But Chloe's not sure she wants to be saved.</p><p>A sequel to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/7615678/chapters/17335303">"The Games You Play"</a> and concurrent with <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/7750162/chapters/17670172">"A Chronic Desire."</a></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Send An Angel Down

Chloe’s got a target.

This time, it’s nothing dangerous. It’s no high dragon, that’s for sure. It’s just a small creature, maybe a rabbit mutation, slowly ambling along the forest floor, munching on the spare grass that grows between the carpet of vines. It’s not quite harmless; those barbed, sharp claws show that it probably gives its potential predators a hell of a time out here. But Chloe’s beaten the Wilds, as awful as that is to admit. It won’t kill her directly. Certainly not this thing.

She almost feels pity for the thing as she lifts a hand and suspends it in a whirl of wind, listening to it shriek and cry in panic. But like everything out here, it’s just a monster, in the end. Like her. She’s just about ready to send a fireball at it when something barrels through the trees and snatches it right out of the air.

The figure smacks back-first into a tree, crumpling to the ground in a pile of limbs and feathers. It’s about human-shaped, but the arms are elongated, the bones stretched to form wings, three flexible talons on the end of them. It sits itself up with the creature in its beak, and as Chloe and it look at each other, it takes one massive chomp and slices the head right off its body, crunching its skull as the remains of the animal slide down its feathered front and leave a streak of blood.

Just as Chloe’s considering roasting this thing and having fried harpy for breakfast instead, it swallows. And speaks.

“What in the Wilds are you supposed to be?” the harpy asks, a high nasally squawking. It starts making a crazed giggling noise as it sits up and eyes her up and down. It has human eyes, green and curious.

Chloe doesn’t answer, cocking her head at this creature. She hasn’t heard anyone speak to her in months. 

“The Wilds just don’t know what to do with you, do they?” the harpy continues, standing on its spindly legs and clutching the rabbit-thing’s body in one hand. “Look at you! Wow!”

Chloe hasn’t looked at herself in ages, not really, but she knows what it’s talking about. The patch of scales on her cheek. The fledgling feathers on her left arm, the soft grey fur sprouting from the other. Her ears, one pointed and high, the other shrinking into nothing. She shed most of her clothes long ago, keeping just enough to have pockets, and the same scattered transformations mark every inch of her skin. Even the claws that have replaced her nails seem to have each come from a separate monster of the Wilds. But the symbol on her arm remains intact, the four runes that signify her unique ability to control the elements. Her hair still grows bright blue, trailing down her chest at this point. Rachel’s marks haven’t left her.

The harpy starts giggling again, clutching its wings to its chest. “Wow!” it repeats again. “I’ve never seen anything like you! Give it a year or two and you’ll be  _ really  _ interesting.”   


Chloe glares at it. She’s eaten formerly-human creatures before. Nothing to be proud of, but it’s necessary. 

“Usually the corruption figures out what to do with you right away. Especially if you’re a sorcerer. But you’re not an ordinary sorcerer, are you?” the harpy continues, reaching out one hand and trailing a claw along her modified focus-sign. “If you were just an air-focus you’d look like me right now. Well, or you’d be a vampire around here, I guess.” It glances around. “If you were in the Windswept Plains, though, definitely feathers all over. I remember when I got stranded out there, it started so fast...” It looks away briefly, and Chloe takes the opportunity to snatch the rabbit’s corpse from its chest. “Hey!”

Chloe bears her sharpened teeth at it, then sets her fist on fire and cooks the rabbit in a single hot flash. It jumps back, dropping into a defensive posture. “Woah, woaaah, okay,” it says slowly, holding its hands out in front of it. “You can have the rest there, girly.”

Chloe eyes it suspiciously as she bites into flesh. Blood drips down her body as she sits down and gnaws until there’s not much left but bone and gristle, the harpy flapping up to a branch nearby and continuing to watch. Chloe should kill it. Monsters should die. But it is talking to her. Interested in her. And it’s weird, but that makes her not want to kill it. It’s been so long since she met something she didn’t want to kill. Or that didn’t want to kill her. Or that she didn’t want to kill her.

She sets aside what’s left of her prey, licking the juices from her claws as she stares down the harpy. 

“You mind if I stick around for a bit?” it asks. “My time’s coming. Soon I won’t be able to talk. You talk?”

Chloe tries to. Her throat feels dry. Not speaking for so long makes her voice sound strained and hoarse when she manages, “I used to.”   


“Didn’t we all.” The harpy’s voice sounds lower than before. Like its giddiness has worn off. “You got a name?”   


Chloe shrugs. “If you want. Chloe.”   


“Auron. I was Auron. Air Marshall of the Primal Core, once. Got blown out of the wards by a hurricane. Never found my way back.” The harpy drops down from his branch, stretching his wings out to his sides. “Going anywhere?”

“No.”   


“I gave up pretty quick, too. It’s a tangle in here.”   


“I came here to die.”

“Now that one, you’ll have to explain.”

 

* * *

 

For the first day, she tells Auron nothing. They coexist, in their way, a strange comfortable silence. Hunting together. Searching for fruit and nuts. Finding lakes or, when that fails, cutting open the vines with the knife that killed Rachel and drinking the sticky green fluids inside of them. Auron tells her she’s basically just sucking down raw corruption, but she doesn’t care. Neither of them really do. 

They sleep up in a tree, Auron’s wings stretching across her chest. The vines don’t try to choke her anymore, but it feels nice regardless.

On the second day, she talks. She talks a lot. She talks about the shaper girl who changed her life, the one who loved her, the one she loved back so fiercely. She talks about the witch who cursed the shaper, she talks about the sorcerer who abused Chloe in her own home, she talks about the academy that kicked her out. She goes back and forth in time, from Rachel’s scream that shattered the protections of her hometown to the young diviner girl who’d been Chloe’s best friend and vanished into a bigger city five years ago. Everything that made her decide to walk out into Hell and try to find the strongest thing out there.

Auron talks back. He seems like he needs to because he knows all his memories will die soon. He tells her about the war with the warlocks, he tells her names and habits of the dead, he tells her of a battle that sent dozens into the Wilds never to return. He talks of a flight out of the Windswept Plains and into the Marshlands they wander now, seeking the corpse of Naut, the old god of water. Just to see it. Aeon’s body was an interesting time, he tells her. The old titan of air had huge hollow bones, made into havens for the creatures who breathed the corrupt winds of the plains and turned into avian freaks like himself, messages scrawled on the inside from the minds of mangled men. He wonders what Naut’s bones are like.

They find out shortly after his curiosity spreads to Chloe. The vines grow thicker and thicker, and they realize they’re heading for the source. Naut’s bones stick out of a swamp, scattered and rotting in the great marsh that formed when his blood spilled onto the bruised earth below. They try to find some meaning in the bones, some pattern, try to find out if they can reconstruct him from bones the size of houses. But if they fly above the treeline, they can’t see anything at all, like he’s gone forever.

They do find his head. The lower jaw’s sunken into the red bog, but the eye sockets and nostril slits are visible above the waterline. Vines crawl out of every crevice of that black skull, writhing in the darkness, growing and growing and growing as they watch. They perch atop his scalp and watch the Wilds begin to sleep, as much as they ever do. 

Chloe ends up on her back, staring into the canopy above and pretending there are stars there. 

On the third day, Auron’s eyes are pure red. He shrieks and claws at her with his talons, scarring her face. She roasts him alive and plucks the feathers from his corpse. He tastes like turkey.

 

* * *

 

She keeps walking. She’s not sure if she’s even heading in a singular direction. The Wilds are a tangle, even as the vines grow thin and weak and the earth becomes solid beneath her feet. She’s entering Kit’s realm, she knows. She wonders what the Old One of earth has in store for her, what his remnants will do to her flagging body.

What she doesn’t expect is to see a human.

She pushes through a thick, thorned bush and finds herself in a clearing, and there she is. Her hand rests on the outside of a great standing stone, one of many in a large circle surrounding a tent and firepit. As she drags her hand down the side of the stone that faces outward, red blood smears its surface in a regular pattern. A rune. The blood flashes in bright blue light and vanishes.

Her blonde hair hangs down past her shoulders, fluffy and beautiful, and her dress is simple, modest and brown, and her feet are bare. Chloe feels ill. A simple stone charm dangles from the human’s neck, and it’s there that Chloe’s eyes focus, there that she feels the most sickly. Something inside her wants to run, to never see the faint blue that’s emanating from every inch of the stone circle, that shines faintly on the charm. Something else is drawing her in. Staring at her face, her soft lips, the peaceful expression on her face as she appraises the stone. 

So Chloe stays frozen right where she is, unwilling to breathe. If she shifts forward, her body revolts. She thinks about just leaving. Just running. But she’s been running for so long.

And more than that, this girl is so  _ young.  _ Maybe Chloe’s age or a year younger. Chloe’s trying to work out what she’s even doing out here when the girl’s face turns and spots her. But there’s no disgust or laughter. Their eyes meet across the clearing. 

“Do you need help?” she calls.

Chloe bolts.

Once she’s clear of the stranger, Chloe tries to keep on her trajectory — whatever trajectory it was. But the aura around the clearing keeps turning her around, turning her back, twisting and pulling sensations in her muscles. The inhuman parts of her  _ ache _ when she draws near, her claws tingling, the patches of fur, feather and scales burning. She circles for what feels like hours. Might be hours, actually, because it seems somewhat like night time now. It’s always hard to tell, but the light filters out of the clearing and through the dense canopy, and now it’s turning orange.

Despite her body’s protests, Chloe sleeps just out of sight of the clearing, right where she can feel the energy pulling at the corruption within her. Because it’s strange, but after waiting so long for something to kill her, she’s gotten tired of things trying and failing.

When she awakens, something on the back of her neck itches. She reaches back, and her claws rake over fresh scales. Something inside her snaps. She remembers Auron’s screeching assault, remembers his red eyes, remembers the taste of him, and she doesn’t want to be that. She can’t. She’s thinking,  _ In a year you’ll be really interesting,  _ and she’s imagining that horrific creature roaming the Wilds and killing innocent people and she  _ tears.  _ Blood pours down her back as she pries the patch of scales off, tears stinging at her eyes. She lets it fall to the forest floor and buries her head in her mangled, misshapen hands and sobs.

It hurts so much. Everything’s hurt so much for so long that Chloe thought she was numb to it. But sitting here on this branch, back slick with red, hunched over and horrifying, it all comes back to her. Everything she’s seen, from Rachel’s slit throat to a monstrous bat sucking the blood from a stray dog to Auron’s final loss of self, it rushes into her thoughts and leaves her weeping for everything she’s lost.

She wants to die. She’s wanted to die since she saw Rachel’s corpse. Further back than that, if she’s honest with herself. 

Maybe her claws are sharp enough. Or she could slit her throat with the same knife that killed Rachel. Yes. It’s obvious the world doesn’t intend to kill her. It intends to change her into something awful instead, so she has to do this herself.

She pulls the knife from her pocket, positions its curve along her throat. And then all her muscles seize at once.

The knife falls to the ground as a soft voice says, “You’re still here.”

Chloe looks below her in a panic, and there she is. She’s  _ tiny.  _ But it’s her, and Chloe’s mind starts processing everything she’s seen as she takes a step closer and sends a jolt of lightning through her bones. The simple clothes, the bare feet — she’s a druid. Her charms ward off corruption, that’s why it hurts so much the closer she steps. Chloe’s body works against her, baring its teeth and flexing its claws while Chloe panics inside this vessel of evil. Is this what it was like for Auron? Is she gone already?

“Can you speak?” the druid asks, stopping for a moment. Chloe jumps down off the branch and takes a few steps back, and her body feels like it’s in her control again. She pants as she stares down the girl. She remembers the last time she talked to someone. Where it all lead.

“Your eyes are still human,” the druid continues, clutching the charm around her neck. At this distance, Chloe can see the cross etched into it. “I can help you.”

_ I don’t deserve your help,  _ Chloe thinks. She takes another step back.

“I—I know it hurts, but please, come closer, I can—”

Chloe runs. She can’t listen to this. She can’t want this. The last time someone worked to help her, she ended up dead. It must’ve been Chloe’s fault. Must’ve been some consequence of what Rachel did to mark her like she did, some sacrifice that she should’ve never made for someone as worthless as Chloe.

But Chloe keeps watching the clearing, all the same. She can’t help it. And now she’s lost the knife, so how can she die? Maybe starvation. This close to that druid’s circle, nothing will come by for her to hunt. It’ll be a slow death, but a certain one. In the meantime, she can watch.

At twilight, she peers through a bush and spots the druid standing just at the edge of the clearing. With Chloe’s knife in her hand, she slashes a clear line across her wrist and lets the blood drop into the corrupted earth of the forest floor. A bloom of red and white petals sprouts into being, a clutch of flowers growing right up from where her blood fell. They’re so small. The druid reaches down and brushes her fingers across them, then heads back into her tent.

The next day, Chloe goes to find where those flowers formed, but they’re gone. She looks up towards the circle and sees the druid sitting at her firepit, a kettle steaming on the coals. She lifts it off, then pours whatever’s inside into a small clay cup. Their eyes meet again, and Chloe dashes up into a tree, scratching into the bark with her claws. She can feel the druid approaching.

“I know the magic is too strong for you near my charms,” the druid calls into the dark. “There’s too much corruption in you right now to power through. But drink this. It’ll help.” 

Chloe waits until the aura’s receded, then hops down from her perch and eyes the cup she left on the ground for her. The liquid inside of it is a brownish-red, the cup hot in Chloe’s hands as she plucks it from the grass. She eyes it suspiciously. But, well, if it’s poison, then she’ll be dead. Not so bad. Chloe looks over at the druid.

“Please,” she mouths from behind one of the stones.

Chloe takes a careful sip and everything inside of her burns.

She falls to her knees, dropping the cup and letting the remainder of the drink spill as she clutches at her throat. But it’s already swallowed, already inside of her, and it’s  _ doing  _ something. It feels like she just ate the druid’s charm. But as she curls herself into a ball, the sensation starts to fade, pushing out from her stomach and into her fingers and toes. She coughs once, then wipes her nose. 

Chloe casts a hateful glare at the druid. “I promise, it will help you,” the druid assures her, pouring another cup. “I can...I can give you more...”

Chloe stands up and walks away, further into the forest. She sits down against a tree. She rolls her tongue around her mouth, trying to understand the flavor, when something shifts. She pokes and prods at it, loosening the fang further and further until it detaches smoothly. She spits it into her hand, wondering at the blackened root. The other fang follows a second later. She prods at the holes with a pinky-claw, scraping against bone there, a new tooth growing to replace it. Not sharp.

She goes back and finds the cup waiting for her right where the flowers had grown. This one she’s careful with, sipping, letting the burning blow through her, sipping again, until the cup’s empty. She leaves it where she found it and steps back into the Wilds with sleep aching in her bones. She finds a soft nest of fallen leaves, and waits to see what changes may come.


	2. Seeds of Possibility

When she awakens, she realizes that while she can still feel the energy of the circle at the edge of her perception, it’s not telling her to run away. It’s just...there. She feels the back of her neck, and while it’s still a massive, ugly scab, she feels nothing but flesh.

She pads into the clearing near sunrise. She can’t help it; she’s curious now. Hunger chews on her organs, but that’s less interesting than whatever she drank last night. She approaches the circle of stones, but as she gets closer, that familiar boiling sensation in her veins starts bubbling up. She’s able to stand being just in front of one monolith. She tries to reach into the circle and pain fires through her fingers, sending her to the ground.

“Fuck!” she shouts reflexively. The tent rustles as she debates just turning around and not bothering anymore, and the druid emerges, the magic shifting around Chloe as the druid hesitantly steps towards her.

“How are you feeling?” she asks, wringing her hands. “I wasn’t sure if I—”

“What the shit did you give me?” Chloe interrupts, stepping back from the circle.

“Oh! That was, um, vampire bloom tea,” the druid explains. “If, um, if pure human blood spills in the Wilds, it acts as a sort of siphon for corrupted energy, turning into flowers and — and if you boil them you can make a tea that drives it off. For a day or two. It’s like a weak charm.” Her cheeks turn pink. “I—I thought maybe it could help you. Stop the...the changes.”

Chloe feels her teeth again, the twin gaps where her fangs used to be. “Why?” she asks. “Why fucking bother?”

The girl looks shocked at the question. “B-because you need help,” she stammers. “You’re in pain, you’re changing into something...dreadful. If I can stop that, I will.”

Chloe gives her a skeptical look. “If you knew anything about me, you’d run.”

“Can we start with your name?”

Chloe pauses, staring at her. This young druid, out here on her own. Helping strange beasts of the Wilds and trying to nurse them back to health. This can’t be real. Life’s never been this kind to her. Something must be wrong. But, well, what else is she going to do?

“Chloe. Chloe Price.”

“I’m Kate.” The druid smiles at her. “Do you need anything? If you keep drinking that tea, it should start to reverse what’s happened to you...or at least, it can make it so you can come into the circle, and that’ll finish the job. I think.”

Chloe sighs. “I...I’m hungry,” she admits. _And cold. And tired. And so, so sick of being alive._

“You shouldn’t eat anything that grows out there if we’re trying to get you back to fully human.” Kate purses her lips. “I’ve got some food in my tent. Give me a minute.”

Chloe takes a few steps away from the circle and paces back and forth. Trying to decide if going back to being human is worth it. Being human was never particularly kind to her before, but then Auron’s attack flashes through her mind again. She shudders. Not like that. She won’t be that. Whatever else happens, she should die before that comes.

Kate comes out with a small blanket wrapped around whatever food she thinks is appropriate for the monster waiting outside her camp. She steps out and lays it on the grass, opening it to reveal things Chloe hasn’t seen or tasted in months. Fruit, real fruit, an apple and a pear that _aren’t_ also wasp’s nests coated in spikes. A hunk of sturdy travel bread, a smattering of strawberries and carrots. It all looks so _pure._ Chloe approaches cautiously once Kate’s retreated back inside the circle.

“There’s still some tea left,” she says, sitting down in front of the firepit and sparking it to life with a quick word to the gods. “I’ll heat it up for you.”

As Chloe scarfs down what Kate’s left out for her, they share a moment of peace. Chloe avoids looking too much at Kate. She doesn’t want to see those questioning green eyes right now. But the _food._ Perhaps in another life it would’ve just been something to eat but now it’s the sweetest thing Chloe’s ever tasted, everything full of flavors that aren’t rot, decay, tang and tar. She’d forgotten how much she’s been missing out on in this corrupted hellscape.

“Do...do you want some clothes?” Kate asks as the kettle begins to whistle.

Chloe shrugs. “Don’t really care that much.” The fire looks so inviting, though. It does feel a bit chilly this morning.

“I have a spare robe or two,” Kate says. “If you want them later.”

Chloe shrugs again as she swallows the last chunk of bread. Even that, bland as it is, feels so full and heavy in her stomach that she wants to weep. She feels the jutting outlines of her ribs and wonders exactly what she must look like now.

Kate brings over a cup of tea, giving Chloe advanced warning so her charm doesn’t cause her pain. Once she’s back inside the circle, Chloe sits cross-legged and starts drinking, one sip at a time, like before. It doesn’t hurt quite as much.

“So...” Kate sits on her knees at the edge of the circle, green eyes sweeping over Chloe. “What are you doing all the way out here?”

“You first,” Chloe grunts. There’s too much to explain. Her voice still hurts from telling Auron everything and it’s not like that helped anything.

“Oh! Yeah, I’m pretty far from civilization myself, I suppose.” Kate tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. “There used to be a druid tribe that lived out here. My tribe. Once wards came along, we migrated south to join the Witchdom, but we like to make pilgrimages out here before we become adults. To remind us of where we came from.” Kate glances around. “We keep the old circles intact, just in case lost souls wander out here. There’s still gardens and orchards growing here — not entirely orderly anymore, but they’ll provide. This used to be the center of town, I think.”

“So you’re here alone?”

Kate nods. “I’m out here on my way to Arcadia. I’m marking the calendar. In a month, I’ll set out for Blackwell Academy — my parents think it’ll be good training for becoming an ambassador for our tribe.”

Chloe looks at her over her cup of tea. “How long have you been out here?”

“Four months.”

Chloe sighs. She should know before she wanders out into a graveyard. “Blackwell’s gone, Kate. Everything’s gone. The wards were destroyed and the Wilds came in.”

“W-what?” Kate clutches at her robe. “How could—”

“I saw it myself. Dragons, werewolves, bats, salamanders...Arcadia burned.” Chloe’s voice cracks.

“How? How did it happen?”

Chloe has her suspicions. It’s her fault. It has to be. Rachel must’ve done so much to give her the gift of the four elements, and whatever she got mixed up in...whatever she did, it must’ve caused the fall. But Chloe doesn’t want to talk about Rachel.

“I don’t know,” she mutters. “But if you wanted to know why I’m out here...I ran.”

“I’m so sorry,” Kate says, and it sounds like she actually means it. “I...I had no idea...how did you survive? Without a charm...”

Chloe thrusts out her right arm, tracing the symbol there for Kate to see. “Sorcerer.”

Kate looks quizzically at the mark. “What focus? I don’t recognize that — wait. That’s...” Her eyes widen. “You have all four signs.”

“And blue hair,” Chloe says with a smirk. “I’m a regular weirdo. Even if I wasn’t growing feathers.”

“I thought the blue hair might be part of the Wilds transformation,” Kate admits. “Not one I’m familiar with, but...”

“Nope. Pre-dates that.”

“Huh.” Kate shifts as Chloe finishes off the last of her tea. “It seems like you’ve had quite a journey, Chloe.”

“You could say that.” Chloe shrugs. “To be honest, I went out into the Wilds trying to die. But nothing out here could kill me. I found dragons, salamanders, harpies, bats, vampires and werewolves...none of them could do it.” She shrinks into herself. “I started to think that I’d just starve, or go crazy and just...I want to stop.” She chokes on her own words. “I want it all to _stop._ ”

A silence falls over the clearing as Chloe sets down her cup and hugs herself. It feels so strange to say it aloud, to a normal human, to someone who’s trying to help. She shouldn’t bother. Chloe’s always been worthless. She’s a monster now, and people should kill monsters, not help them.

“Chloe...” Kate’s voice strains. “Please stay close. I can help you. I know I can.”

“I don’t know if I want you to.”

“You do, or you would’ve left already. Somewhere in you, something wants to live.” Kate clears her throat. “I...I’ll make sure you do. If you let me.”

Chloe rakes her claws down her face, cutting into her lips. “I don’t know,” she mumbles. “I’m not worth it.”

“You’re a human being. You’re worth it. You can be saved.”

Kate stands and starts walking over to Chloe. As soon as Chloe feels her aura approaching, her muscles turn against her and force her to stand and run, back into the forest, away from the energies of the druid’s blessed blood.

 

* * *

 

Kate leaves her another meal out in the clearing, another cup of tea. She’s nowhere to be seen as Chloe consumes everything, and thank the gods for that. This is easier to do when Chloe doesn’t have to talk, doesn’t have to verbalize her thoughts. The tea burns even less this time. She tries approaching the circle again, and while it doesn’t shock her, her body refuses to move beyond the barrier they create. She sighs and wonders why she’s doing this again, but...

_You’re worth it._

What a strange thing to say. She doesn’t even _know_ Chloe. Only one person really did, and she’s dead now, buried where Chloe left her. Everyone else abandoned or betrayed her years ago. What’s _with_ this druid?

Speaking of which, where is she? Chloe walks around the entire circle and sees no sign of her. She recalls that Kate mentioned more circles somewhere, the remains of a town, so she starts back off into the Wilds, trying to feel out more protective auras. She following the buzzing in her skin until she comes across another clearing, a circle of stones surrounding a modest little garden. Kate’s not there, either.

Where Chloe ends up finding her is just up under a cliff, a lake formed by a waterfall high above. She stands at the edge of the lake, behind another protective circle. As Chloe watches from a tree, she lifts her dress off over her head.

Chloe stares. She shouldn’t. She should look away from Kate’s bare body, but...it’s a pure, human body. A beautiful one. She hasn’t seen so much unmarred skin since she fled Arcadia.

Kate dips into the water and Chloe turns away, hating the heat that’s running through her body. _That’s why. That’s why you’re letting her help you. You’re fucking disgusting. All it takes is a pretty girl and you act like you’re worth something. Tricked Rachel all those years until you got her in bed and then you killed her. Leave._ **_Leave._ **

She looks back over her shoulder and sees Kate with her eyes closed, contentedly scrubbing between her toes with a soapstone. Chloe runs a hand along her back, feeling the blood caked there, then looks down at herself and grimaces. The grime has really built up. What remains of her clothing is truly filthy, caked with brown and red and a dozen other muted colors, from slain foes, from her own body. There hadn’t been a place to get clean since she left, nothing but filthy bogs and springs filled with grasping vines. And she hadn’t cared, until she saw Kate.

_You’re a human being._

It’s hard to believe that, looking down at herself, the stringy blue hair clumping together in spots, the scars and pits and dirt spread across her body, in her feathers, her fur. But that’s how Kate saw her. Maybe in time she can see herself that way, too.

 

* * *

 

 

Chloe tries to avoid seeing her. To avoid thinking about her too much. She watches to make sure Kate’s somewhere else when she takes the meals set out for her, stays in the shadows otherwise. She can’t believe Kate would actually want to talk to her again. Can’t believe she’s still doing this. She doesn’t want to talk about it and make it real, really commit to changing her course after all these months. But she’s so tired.

On the fifth day, she finds she can cross the circle.

Her claws vibrate when she pushes her hand through the barrier, but through it goes. It feels like she’s putting her hand in ice-cold water, numbing her nerves. But as she fights to keep her body from rebelling, the sensation slowly fades. Her muscles give up their struggle.

Chloe’s so focused on her hand, so focused on watching her claws rattle, that she doesn’t spot Kate entering in from behind her tent until she pops out and says, “Chloe!”

Chloe jumps back as her hand suddenly flares in pain. “Dammit!” she curses, flexing her fingers.

“Oh!” Kate looks down at her charm and takes it off from around her neck, throwing it in the tent. “Is that better? Can you cross now?”

Chloe swallows. She steps forward again, stopping just at the edge of the invisible wall. “Come on,” Kate whispers. “It’ll...it’ll help you so much...”

Chloe hesitates. She can’t get too close to Kate. She’s a monster. Something...something she’s taken in from the Wilds might take over, like it does when she’s too close to Kate’s charm. Might kill her. But Kate’s pleading, grasping her hands in front of her. “Come on. Come on, you can do it.”

Chloe takes a deep breath. This is more than taking a step. This is leaping back into life as a human being. Is it worth it? Would she be better off if she let the Wilds take her after all?

But then she remembers how she felt when the corruption took over just to save itself. What will it feel like, if it takes her over entirely? Will her mind be empty, or will she be watching from behind her own eyes as her former body eviscerates and incinerates and uses all the powers at its disposal to tear the world apart?

It can’t end like that. She has to take control of it. No matter where her life ends, it will be her own end to choose.

She puts a foot over the barrier, and goosebumps shoot up all over her body. Before she can give up, run again, she jumps right into the circle.

She doesn’t exactly stick the landing. Her body crumples as soon as she’s inside, curling into the fetal position on the ground as Kate rushes over to her. Everything hurts, so much more than she would’ve ever imagined. But Kate’s hand is warm on her shoulder as pain crawls up her veins and into her organs. She’s gasping for air, getting up on her hands and knees.

She retches, and a thin green ooze drips from her mouth. As Chloe’s body starts finally ridding itself of evil, hacking up bile and blood and tar, Kate is there to hold her and whisper, over and over, “I’m here, I’m here.”


	3. Collecting Curiosity

Kate’s willing to admit, at this point, that she has no clue what she’s doing.

Her pilgrimage, her guardianship task, those had been going about as she’d expected. Everything she’d been told would happen did; she walked the Wilds for days and days, only knowing her destination by the dowsing rod; she found the dense woods beginning to encroach on the ancient circles and renewed their power with her blood; she slept in her tent and tended the gardens and used the river nearby for...sanitary purposes, and while it had all been hard work, she’d known what was coming.

But this?

She’s sitting beside a girl who went into the Wilds unprotected, someone who’d been turning into a monster for months before they met. A girl who suffered so much pain upon returning to the warded world that she threw up... _stuff_ and collapsed unconscious. This had not been part of the plan. Everything Kate’s done so far has been scrambling; recalling half-remembered tales of how to fix the corrupted, the nature of the Wilds, along with a small candle of hope that maybe, maybe she could help someone.

But Chloe hasn’t moved in hours. Her breath comes in shallow spurts as she lies under Kate’s blanket, eyes closed. It had been the eyes that mattered, the first time Kate saw her. Such a pretty blue, far from the single-colored blank spaces of a monster’s eyes. She looked so sad. So hurt. And she kept coming back.

Kate runs her fingertips along the hard patch of blue scales on Chloe’s cheek. Each of her mutations looks like a different one of the Wilds’ many humanoid dangers trying to take control of her. Scales of a salamander, feathers of a harpy, fur of the werewolf, fangs of the vampire (though it seems the tea took care of those really quick). Is that because of the four-pronged focus-sign on her arm? Is she too hard for even the Wilds to pin down? If that’s so, how can Kate think she can manage her?

Chloe suddenly lets out a long groan, clutching at her head. She sits up and rubs at her eyes.

“...how are you feeling?” Kate asks as Chloe slumps over herself, resting her chin on one hand, looking at the claws on the other.

“Like complete ass,” Chloe mutters.

“Oh.” Kate looks away as the blanket shifts off of Chloe’s chest. Now that she’s awake, she really should stop...studying. It’s rude. Chloe’s a person, not some Wilds monster she’s dissecting to learn about corruption. “Does it...do you need anything?”

Chloe sighs, grinding her palm into her eyes. “I don’t know. Gimme, like, ten minutes. It’s like...” She waggles her claws in the air like she’s grasping for something. “Like I’ve been awake for a week. Everything’s heavy. And shitty.” She stares at her claws. “Are these gonna fall off soon or what? I hate them.”

“I’m...not sure. I think the corruption has to be totally purged from you, and then the changes will start reversing,” Kate muses.

“But my fangs fell out,” Chloe points out, poking at the empty spaces in question.

“I think that’s just because the tea touched them directly.”

“Great. Make me a bath of that shit and we’ll be set.”

Kate can’t help but giggle. “I don’t think I have _that_ much blood in me.”

“Oh, right.” Chloe suddenly grabs Kate’s arm, turning it over. “Shit. Did that hurt?” she asks, trailing a claw along the line of Kate’s cut.

“It did,” Kate admits, “But I _am_ a druid. Giving up our blood to protect people from the Wilds is what we do.” 

“How come you’re not all covered in scars?” Chloe asks, still holding Kate’s arm and looking it up and down.

“Well, normally we’re directly sacrificing it to Fortan, and he heals our wounds as repayment,” Kate explains. “We are made of tougher stuff than most people, though. It healed pretty quickly.”

“Hmph.” Chloe lets go and Kate’s arm feels a bit colder. “Only knew one druid in Arcadia and I don’t think he was normal.”

“We tend to keep to our own. I wish we didn’t, sometimes,” Kate admits. “People don’t like us very much. I wanted to change that, but...”

“Yeah. Arcadia. Blackwell.” Chloe clenches her fist and looks down. “Sorry, Kate.”

“It’s really gone? All of it?” Kate asks.

“I don’t know for sure,” Chloe admits. “I felt the wards fall, I...I tried to save someone who was outside of the town. By the time I found her body and buried her, all I could see of Arcadia was fire. So I ran.” Chloe draws into herself. “I’m such an _asshole._ I should’ve run back, I should’ve tried to help, but I just...” She growls. “All this power, and I just wanted to run out into the Wilds and die.”

“Why?” Kate asks.

Chloe looks at her then, and there’s something dark in her eyes. “I...can’t explain it. Not really.” She shrugs. “The girl I tried to save, she seemed like the only thing that ever mattered. If she was dead, I should be dead, too. Still kind of think that. She wasted so much time on me.” She falls back onto Kate’s bedroll and closes her eyes. “Fuck. I don’t want to talk about it.”

“That’s all right,” Kate assures her. “I’m not here to interrogate you. I just want to help.”

“I don’t know if you can.” Chloe’s words are quiet. “I was broken way before I started growing scales.”

“I can help with that, at least.”

“Hope so.”

It’s quiet between them for a moment as Chloe breathes deeply. Kate watches her chest rise and fall, thinking about how clearly she can see Chloe’s ribs, how many little scars mark that filthy flesh. “Is there anything you want?” Kate asks after a while.

“Bath. I said a bath before, and right now that’s sounding really good. A hot bath.”

“Not too many of those around here, I’m afraid,” Kate tells her. “But there is a place you could get clean.”

“I can make it hot.”

“How — oh, right. Sorcerer.” Kate smiles. “I haven’t met many sorcerers. Certainly not ones with all four signs.”

“Well, I haven’t met many druids, so we’re both going to have to live with each other.” Chloe’s tone’s shifts a bit as she sits up. She’s got some hint of a smile going. “And, uh, you said something earlier about clothes? Maybe those after the bath? Because, like, if I’d gotten _all_ the feathers or the fur I’d probably be fine, but seriously I’ve been cold for forever.”

“Sure. Do you want to go now?”

“Why not?” Chloe cracks her neck. “You got something else to do?”

“I was going to roast a few vegetables from the garden for dinner, but that can wait.” Kate stands up and reaches into one of the packs within the tent, drawing out a pouch of powder, a comb, and her soapstone. “Do you think you could wear a charm?”

Chloe shrugs. “Don’t know.”

Kate frowns, then walks over to the edge of the circle where she’d left her charm while Chloe slept. She puts it around her neck and approaches Chloe, who’s staring at the charm and tensing her fingers. But as Kate kneels down beside her, Chloe lets out a sigh of relief.

“Nothing,” she tells Kate. “Yeah, I think I’m over the whole ‘good stuff hurts’ thing. You got another one?”

“Umm...” Kate bites her lip. “It’s...it’s one of my family’s, but I’m sure they wouldn’t mind. They gave it to me as a backup anyway. Just in case I lost this one.”

“I won’t lose it,” Chloe promises. Kate nods and searches her witch’s bag in the corner of the tent until she pulls out a charm nearly identical to her own, with the same cross etched into it. She loops it around Chloe’s neck for her. “Thanks,” Chloe says, grimacing a little bit. Maybe she was lying about the pain, but as long as Chloe wears it, it’s good enough for Kate.

Chloe grasps the charm between two fingers, peering at the symbol. “What with this?” she asks, poking the cross.

“Oh, it’s just my family’s crest. Only the gods know how long we’ve used it. You can see it etched into some of the stones around the pool, actually,” Kate says offhandedly. “Most of the druid families have them.”

“Never saw anything like this on Bowers’ stuff,” Chloe murmurs, struggling to stand up.

“Bowers? That was the druid you knew in Arcadia?” Kate’s nose wrinkles automatically before she remembers to relax herself and not judge other people for their choices.

“Yeah. You know him?”

“The name. They aren’t, um, spoken of too fondly in the Delegation meetings I’ve been to,” Kate says quickly.

Chloe laughs. “I’d imagine. The guy wasn’t too popular in Arcadia either, but he had what people needed.” She’s just managed to get on her hands and knees, her joints creaking, so Kate reaches out. Chloe takes her hand without comment and lets Kate raise her up. She cracks her back once she’s standing at her (rather imposing, to Kate) full height. Now that Kate can see her whole body so close like this, it’s clear she really _does_ need a bath. The poor girl has so much dried blood on her. What has she gone through, all these months? 

“All right. I think I can walk. Let’s go.”

Kate grabs a spare dress from her pack and leads Chloe out of the central circle, spotting the tiny, barely-visible path through the dense Wild forest that leads to the waterfall pool. Little stones dot the borders, glowing faintly blue.

“Wow, I didn’t even feel these before,” Chloe remarks as they start on the path.

“They just keep it clear of plants. They’re too weak to actually directly affect tainted things,” Kate explains as Chloe steps gingerly through the forest. She glances at Chloe’s feet and wonders if they’ll get any smaller when her reversion is all done with. The girl looks like she could roundhouse-kick a werewolf.

Speaking of werewolves...

Kate stops dead in her tracks when she spots the three pairs of solid yellow eyes glinting in the darkness. They stand as if in formation, frozen stiff as Kate at the eye contact. Chloe looks around and spots them.

“Pfft. These guys,” Chloe says, rolling her eyes. “You should see the real far-gone ones. These ones are probably only a couple years old. The big red ones are the ones to worry about, the ones who can’t even stand like a person anymore.”

The three wolves bear their teeth and stand bipedal, splaying their arms out at their sides.

“Territorial little fucks, aren’t you?” Chloe asks, igniting her fists in flame. “You guys really wanna do this?”

“They won’t attack us,” Kate says, tugging at Chloe’s arm. “We’re charmed.”

“I want ‘em gone anyway,” Chloe growls. She flings a fireball overhand at the one in front. He ducks it and whimpers, then turns tail, his pack-mates following close behind him. “Yeah, get out of here,” Chloe mutters. “Fuckin’ hate wolves.”

Kate doesn’t ask why as Chloe starts stomping ahead again like she knows precisely where she’s going. She gets the feeling it’s sort of personal.

Once they step into the circle surrounding the waterfall pool, Chloe relaxes, her body dropping out of its defensive stance. She gives Kate a mischievous look as she approaches the water.

“Kelpies _hate_ when you do this,” she remarks, then turns around and thrusts her hand into the water. For a moment, it’s like nothing at all has happened; then a burst of bubbles form where Chloe’s hand is lying underwater, spreading out across the pool until it’s all boiling and steaming. Chloe withdraws her hand and surveys her work.

“The waterfall will cool it back down after a while,” Chloe says. “But it’ll be nice while it lasts.” She peels herself out of the rags that just barely cover her thighs, sighing with relief as they pull free and Kate does not stare. She wouldn’t stare anyway because _yikes_ it’s gross there. She really, really needs a bath. But...

As Kate lifts her dress off over her head, she hears a sputtering objection. “Hey! Who said you had to get naked?”

“You think I don’t want a warm bath, too?” Kate asks. “It’s been months. And you need someone to wash your hair, it’s so long.”

“Oh. Yeah, sure. Makes sense.” As Kate discards her dress, Chloe looks away, slowly lowering herself into the pool. Kate tosses her the soapstone before heading in herself, letting out a soft sigh at the enveloping warmth of Chloe’s work. She keeps her gaze off of Chloe, although she can see the grime flowing out of the pool and into the passageway in the cliff where it turns into an underground river. Still, it’s not polite to stare, and it feels right, for now, to just close her eyes and float where her feet can’t touch the bottom.

She hears Chloe grunting and pops one eye open. She’s leaning over the water, tugging at the knots and clumps in her hair. She spots Kate looking and throws up her hands.

“All right. Yeah. Come help me with this bullshit.”

Kate smiles and gets out of the pool for a moment, grabbing the sack of powder and the comb. She waves Chloe over, telling her to sit on the rocks in front. She starts rubbing white into Chloe’s hair.

“Uh, what’s that?” Chloe asks nervously as a lather starts to form on her head.

“It cleans your hair. I only use it once a month or so, but it works miracles,” Kate assures her, rubbing more into the length of blue that runs down Chloe’s back. “All right. Dip your head in.”

Chloe vanishes under the water entirely for a minute, then emerges, her hair soft and pliant as Kate starts running a comb through it. Chloe winces as Kate untangles the knots, rakes out the filth that’s clumping things together, but she makes no official, worded protest.

“So how did this end up blue?” Kate asks as she tugs out a particularly irritating knot. “It’s pretty.”

“Oh, um...” Chloe fiddles with a spare strand, wrapping it around her finger. “This...this shaper girl, she used to do little spells for me all the time.”

“You knew a shaper?” Kate asks. “Wow. You really are something special.”

Chloe snorts. “E _special_ ly fucked up, maybe. She was the one I...” She falls silent, rubbing the wet fur on one of her arms. “She was the special one.”

“O-oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—”

“It’s all right,” Chloe mumbles. “Not your fault.”

Kate bites her lip and stays silent while she finishes her task, Chloe’s hair finally turning into the nice sheet of blue Kate hoped it would be, not the twisted half-dreadlocks it had been becoming. Chloe runs her hands through it, bringing it over her shoulder.

“Thanks.” Chloe pushes herself into the deep part of the water and dives out of sight. Kate floats, feeling warm currents rise from beneath her, soothing her back. She supposes that’s Chloe, spreading heat down there somewhere. A girl of many talents.

Kate’s suddenly rocked off course and sent sputtering into the water as Chloe shoots up, bringing a pillar of water with her. As Kate fights to right herself, she sees Chloe suspending herself in the air, just for a moment, before back-flipping and diving back in. Just as she’s recovering from that, Chloe’s head pops up, a smug grin plastered on her face.

“Water power’s fun,” she notes, sending a huge wave at Kate. Kate ducks under the water and feels it pull back just before it reaches her.

“You’re lucky,” Chloe tells her once she resurfaces. “All I’ve been using this crap for since I got it is killing things. Who knows, I might just screw up sometime and poof! No more cute little druid.”

“Just don’t get too carried away,” Kate requests, smiling back at her. “And you don’t mean that.”

“You never know.” Chloe looks like she’s about to follow up her statement with a threat, but as she raises her hand above the water, she stops. Her eyes catch on those mismatched claws, and she lowers them again. She clears her throat. “All right. Think I’m as clean as I’m getting. Let’s eat.”

Kate’s surprised at how pale she really is as her whole cleansed body rises out of the water, heading for the spare dress. There was so much dirt on her, Kate had had no idea what her skin really looked like, the parts that aren’t changing. Her hair starts whipping around her face, and Kate realizes she must be wind-drying herself. _Stop studying, Kate_ , she scolds herself as Chloe pulls the dress on. It’s kind of short on her, and now...now she just looks like a girl. An unusual girl, to be sure, a malnourished and diseased and blue-haired and slightly deformed girl, but still a human. Maybe Kate’s age, or a bit older. How sad that she should end up out here.

“Come on, I’m starving,” Chloe says, breaking Kate out of her thoughts. She quickly rises out of the water, but Chloe puts a hand out. “Uh, you want me to dry you?”

“Um.” Kate suddenly feels a bit vulnerable, naked and hugging herself before this...this stranger. But it would make things faster. “Sure.”

Chloe nods, and Kate suddenly feels a warm breeze rolling all around her, sweeping her hair up and off of her body as the water on her skin evaporates. It’s over so quickly Kate can barely believe it, but she feels more-or-less totally dry. She utters a quick thank-you and rushes to get dressed.

“So, um...” Chloe idly runs her fingers through her hair. “I dunno how much food you got, or if it’s cool if I sleep in your tent, but...how long can I stay?”

What a ridiculous question. Kate puts a hand on her shoulder.

“As long as you need.”


	4. One Moment of Ease

Kate could get up, but the morning air bites at her face when she stirs, so she just hikes the blanket up over her head and keeps her eyes closed. It’d been a nice, quiet dinner, no need to talk too much but not awkward, either. As strange as her new friend is, it’s nice to have company again, to share this slice of the tamed world with someone. Chloe looks troubled so much of the time, and for good reason, but right now Kate can hear her breathing softly beside her in the tent, calm and measured and peaceful. Kate’s almost fallen asleep again when she hears Chloe grumble and shift.

Kate doesn’t feel any particular need to get up while Chloe gets up and softly pads outside. Chloe will be fine without her. After a while, she hears wood clacking together outside, and then a sharp _pop_ and the crackling of a fire. Warmth begins to tickle Kate’s toes and she sighs happily. How nice to have someone to take care of such things for her.

“Hey, Kate?” comes softly through the air. “Kate? Check this out.”

“Mm?” Kate sits up and looks out through the open tent flap. Chloe sits at the edge of the fire, two fingers pinching the claw on her right middle finger.

“Look.” Chloe moves the claw up and down, and Kate squints.

“Is something...”

“Get closer.”

Kate slowly exits the tent, crawling on her knees until she’s sitting right next to Chloe. From here, she can see that the claw in question is more like a talon growing from the end of Chloe’s finger, curling menacingly inward. Chloe shakes her hand once, and Kate sees it. A little wobble.

“I think if I just...” Chloe tugs at the talon, Kate wincing as she pulls and pulls. Then there’s this awful sound, like snapping a twig, and it comes free in Chloe’s other hand. There’s no nail covering the end of that finger, not entirely, but there’s no blood, just a noticeable dark line where the talon once grew.

“Fuck yes!” Chloe exclaims, standing up and holding the claw above her head. “And it was the best finger, too!” She whoops and throws the claw into the fire, then gives the Sunless Forest itself a very enthusiastic one-finger salute. “Fuck you, Wilds!” she calls across the clearing. “I win!”

Kate giggles. It’s nice to see Chloe grinning and celebrating and just...happy. About something, anything. Then Chloe turns back around and looks down at her left hand.

“C’mon,” she mutters, pulling at the long, needle-like black claw on that middle finger. “I gotta do the double. C’mon.”

It’s not loose. Kate can see that right away. “Chloe—” she begins, but—

It sounds like someone tearing a roll of parchment in half. Chloe screams as the claw comes free, blood spattering on the ground as she rips it out of its anchor. Kate squeezes her eyes closed to avoid looking at the mangled finger beneath the claw’s old casing.

There’s a moment of quiet, filled only with Chloe’s labored breathing. “Fucking _ow,_ ” Chloe mutters as Kate opens one eye to see what she’s doing. Blood pours from her flesh where the claw had taken hold, where sharp black fragments still shine. Chloe grunts and tosses that claw into the fire too, then gives the Wilds a somewhat more disheartened double-bird. “Yeah. Still fuck you,” she says, flumping down onto the grass and clutching her finger.

“Are you okay?” Kate asks.

“I’m a fucking idiot, but I can still move it and stuff,” Chloe mutters. “You, uh, wouldn’t happen to know some healing spells, would you?”

“I have a couple ready for emergencies. Simple things. It’ll stop the bleeding, I think.” Kate stands up and heads into the tent, coming out with her witch’s bag. She sits next to Chloe and draws out a small pouch of ashes and a little ruby.

She sprinkles the ashes on Chloe’s finger, whispering an apology as she grimaces. She tells Chloe to hold onto the ruby, then takes her spellbook from the bag and reads the incantation for what she labeled as “staunch.” The ruby crumbles in Chloe’s grip and the ashes flare up white for a moment, but when it’s done, the remaining fragments of the claw push themselves out of Chloe’s skin, and the ring where they had been bleeds no more.

Chloe gives her a gruff “thanks” and falls back down onto her back. “Sorry I’m so fucking dumb.”

“It’s all right,” Kate assures her. “I can understand...not wanting them on you anymore. Do they...do they hurt?”

“It all hurts,” Chloe replies, shifting onto her side. “All the fucked-up parts of me hurt. Ever since I started wearing a charm, living in here. Losing that claw felt so fucking good, I just wanted...”

“I’m sorry.” Kate puts a hand on her shoulder.

“My own stupid fault. I’m the one who decided to walk out into the Wilds alone and unprotected.” Chloe sniffs.

“You were clearly...from what you told me, you must’ve been so hurt. I don’t blame you.” Kate rubs Chloe’s shoulder.

“I do,” Chloe grumbles. “I just wish it would all go _away._ ”

“I know it’s hard, but you just need to be patient. People have come back from worse states than this, but...it’s never easy.” Kate shudders, remembering stories told around the firepit in her home village, werewolves whose very bones had twisted out of shape and had to slowly shift back into position over the course of years. She hopes Chloe isn’t that far gone. Luckily, none of the various transformative effects seem to be much more than skin-deep. “I’ll watch over you,” Kate promises.

“For how long?” Chloe asks, ripping blades of grass out of the ground. “Shouldn’t you...I mean, what are you gonna do, anyway? Arcadia’s gone, Blackwell’s dead, like...when are you going home?”

“Not until you’re better,” Kate tells her.

“We have no clue how long that’ll take,” Chloe argues, sitting up and looking Kate in the eye. “Shit, Kate, your family’s probably gonna be worried sick if you stay out here past when you were supposed to go to Blackwell. I mean, if the news reaches them, they might think...”

“It’s best if we keep you inside protection circles and eating nothing but untainted food for as long as we possibly can,” Kate counters. “The less we have to purge from you, the faster you’ll get better.”

“Wait. Are you planning to take me with you when you go?” Chloe asks.

Kate looks at her like she’s lost her mind. “Of course! Why would I leave you alone out here?”

Chloe looks down and shrugs. “I dunno, I just...I figured you’d leave. That’s what happens to me. People leave. I’m better off on my own where I can’t hurt people. I can’t believe you want to...to help me. It’s such a waste of time.”

“No it’s not!” Kate objects. “You’re really something special, Chloe. And people are probably worried about you, too. Don’t you have any family? Any friends?”

“Friends are dead or...or they left me a long time ago.” Chloe sighs. “My mom...she’s probably dead. I don’t know, but, just how bad Arcadia got when the wards fell...it wasn’t just, like, a passive thing. When it happened, it _called_ to the Wilds, like, this scream I could feel in my bones.” Chloe shivers, hugging herself. “Everything rushed in.”

“Chloe...” Kate’s voice cracks. “You...you deserve to keep going. To find your answers. We can go to Citadel, we can look around, just...I want to stay with you. I can’t just leave someone out alone in the world like that. It...it’s not right.”

Chloe chuckles. “I don’t deserve you. You know that, right?”

“That’s nonsense.” Kate folds her arms. “We’re gonna get through this together. I’m not leaving your side.”

“You mean, until I’m better.”

“I don’t see any reason to go away after that,” Kate remarks. “You’re my friend now.”

Chloe looks critically at her. “So, we’re friends?”

“Of course!”

“After, what, maybe a week of _really_ weird interactions?”

Kate nods, pursing her lips. Why is Chloe making this so hard? Obviously they’re friends and they’re going to stick together.

“Man. People said druids were crazy.” Chloe cracks a smile. “All right, ‘friend’, if you’re so friendly please point me to some meat. I’m itching for it.”

Kate curls up her nose. “We don’t eat meat.”

“What?”

“Well, first of all, raising enough livestock to feed a tribe in a protective circle would require stones the size of mountains,” Kate says, “So our forefathers didn’t exactly have the resources, and also, it just seems cruel, bringing these animals back from their tainted versions just to kill and eat them, right?”

Chloe raises her eyebrows. “Huh. Never thought of it that way. But, Kate, I’m still kinda wanting it, no offense. Maybe I should go out and—”

“Eating Wilds game will _not_ make you recover faster,” Kate chides. “Come on. Let’s get you out into the gardens, I’ll show you around, what we can make for our meals. There’s a nice crop of beans coming in...”

 

* * *

 

It turns out Chloe can handle this life that Kate’s been living rather well.

She makes an art out of keeping the crops fed and healthy, using her earth and water powers to draw up fertile soil and keep everything watered. With her fire abilities, she’s quickly learning to roast their food to perfection, perfectly controlled burns. She watches as Kate uses her blood to refresh the network of protected circles in the area, watching as the trees slowly shrivel and die off around them, reclaiming the plains that legend says once stretched across this part of the world before Kit’s corpse covered them in canopy.

They share warmth in the tent during cold nights, set out each morning to maintain this old place together. Kate’s glad to have Chloe by her side. And she is getting better. She jokes and laughs and scrapes dry scales from her body, plucks loose feathers from her flesh, sheds out all of that grey fur all over the tent one sneezy night.

Chloe also keeps the curious Wilds monsters at bay. Sometimes they’ll see werewolves prowling the edges of the circles, waiting for a chance, and Chloe will scare them off with elemental displays. Sometimes she disappears into the forest for an hour, and then there are no sightings of any beasts for days. Kate doesn’t stop her. She can’t pretend to cry any tears for the creatures out there, and it does feel safer, not to have those eyes watching her on the paths even if she has faith in the power of her charm. Chloe’s always quiet when she comes back. All Kate can offer is a quiet ‘thank you’ at dinner.

They don’t talk about Chloe’s past much. Chloe doesn’t want to and Kate doesn’t want to push. But it’s always there in the back of her mind, and she has some ideas of how to get Chloe better. Not just purging the corruption from her, but the rest of her pain too. To help her deal with it.

Kate just hopes that Chloe will agree when the time comes.

 

* * *

 

Chloe laughs as she pulls the last of her claws from her feet late one evening, holding it up in the firelight for Kate to see.

“Still got a little patch of scales here,” she says, slapping a spot on her back, “and I think what’s under my armpits is actually literally fur. Some of it, anyway. But, man. No more claws.” She throws it in the fire and smiles as it blackens. She falls on her back and pats her stomach, staring up at the stars.

Kate watches her flex her fingers in front of her face, staring at the new nails growing in. She doesn’t look quite as happy as Kate would like, so Kate lies down beside her and looks up at the constellations for a moment, to share her company.

“Are you feeling okay?” Kate asks after a moment of silence.

“I just...” Chloe sighs. “Just thinking about what’s after this. This has been nice. All of it. The last couple weeks or however long it’s been. But...you need to go home. I don’t know if...” Chloe grunts. “Whatever. It’s nothing.”

“It’s not.” Kate knows this by now. That to coax real _talks_ out of Chloe means that you have to show that you really do care. That Chloe isn’t just ranting or rambling or whining, like she says she is. “Chloe, you can tell me.”

“I don’t know if I can go back,” Chloe blurts out. “Like, back to a fuckin’, normal-ass life again. How do you do that? After all this? Everything? Like, how do I keep going? This out here, with just you, this makes sense to me. Eat, sleep, shit, live. That’s all. I don’t...everyone and everything I ever knew is fucking Wilds-bait.” Chloe turns over and punches the ground. “And even before that I sucked at being a fucking person. I was a dropout, okay? I wasn’t going anywhere. Rachel was the only one who thought I was worth a shit and I got her killed.”

Kate blinks. “Rachel? Who’s that?”

“I—” Chloe chokes. “Nobody. Nobody special, forget about it.”

“Chloe,” Kate says softly, touching Chloe’s arm. “Who’s Rachel?”

Chloe sits up, cradling her head in her hands. “The best person I ever met,” she says after a long silence. “The girl who saved me. The girl who changed me, gave me blue hair, gave me all these powers. The best shaper in the Witchdom, I know she was. And now she’s dead. In the fucking ground where I put her.”

“W-what do you mean?” Kate stammers, sitting up and wringing her hands in her lap. “What are you saying?”

“I—I don’t _know,_ all right?” Chloe clenches her fingers. “But, but...on the night she gave me this...” She pulls up her sleeve and shows her focus-signs. “I went to find her, and she wasn’t home. That’s when I heard the scream, when the wards broke. I...I followed it. I could feel it in the air, feel where it was strongest. When I got there...” She gulps. “I found these two guys. One of them was a professor at Blackwell, the other was this stuck-up rich kid piece of shit. Only...only they’d changed. Like me, sort of. And Rachel’s body was there, lying on the ground, and I think the kid killed her and it set something off and that’s why Arcadia burned, and I think she was involved in something really fucked-up, like, they were saying these things to each other and I—”

“Chloe,” Kate whispers, reaching for her hand. “Breathe, Chloe.”

Chloe swallows and nods, wiping tears away from her eyes. “I don’t know,” she repeats quietly. “I feel like — like she got all mixed up in something so she could...do what she did for me. She thought I was so special. She loved me.” She chokes back something. “I loved her, so much, and I got her killed. She never should’ve tried to help me. All it did was blow up in her face. I ruin _everything._ ” She sniffs. “I—I ruined my family because I dropped out of school, because I always hated my step-dad because he hated me for being such an angry fuck-up all the time, I ruined my only other friendship before that by being all, like, testing it and stuff, I just — I don’t belong in the real world. I belong out here.” She pulls in a shuddering breath. “With the monsters.”

“Chloe...” Kate can’t think of what to say. And Chloe’s crying now, tears glinting in the firelight, soft whimpers escaping her as she covers her eyes with her hands. So Kate just hugs her while she thinks, and Chloe relaxes a bit in her hold. “It wasn’t your fault,” she whispers. “You didn’t ask her to do this, did you?”

Chloe shakes her head. “She just wanted to help me, I never deserved it, I was just floored she wanted to _talk_ to me—”

“Then it’s not your fault. I...you obviously didn’t know.” Kate rubs Chloe’s back, feeling the patch of scales through the dress. “Chloe, I’ve been thinking, and...I want to see Arcadia for myself. And I think it would help you too. Maybe it’s not as bad as you think, and even if...even if it is, maybe we can find some clue. Some answer for you.”

Chloe pulls back. “I—Kate, why? That’s...there won’t be anything left, there can’t be. If there is then...” She coughs. “Then I left for nothing.”

“You didn’t. You...you’ve had such a hard time.” Kate’s chest compresses, thinking of all the pain in Chloe’s voice. “I’m just glad I found you. Even if we don’t find anything, at least we’ll know for sure. Then you can come back with me. I...Chloe, to me, you’re a part of my family.” Kate lightly touches Chloe’s charm. “We’d accept you. I know we would. I won’t abandon you to the Wilds. The world’s been cruel enough to you already.”

“I killed them,” Chloe mutters. “I killed them both for what they did to her.”

Goosebumps rise on Kate’s skin. She’d had a feeling, but hearing Chloe say it out loud is something else.

“They were monsters like me. They had to die. I should’ve died with them.”

“You’re not a monster,” Kate assures her. “I know you’re not. You’re, you’re funny, and you’re smart, and I just...I’ve loved having you around. Despite everything, I’m glad to call you my friend.”

Chloe lets out a sob and clings to Kate. “You’re too good for me,” she moans. “You should let me go. Let me run away, or you’ll die too.”

“Chloe, I’m fine. I have you to protect me.”

“I never protected anyone. All I did was kill and run.”

“But you can. You protect me already. I know what you do out there. I know you...you kill them just to make me feel better.” Kate squeezes Chloe. “I trust you.”

Chloe pulls back. She wipes her eyes, then stands up and walks into the tent, wrapping herself up in the blanket.

Kate tries repeating her name a few times, but it seems like the conversation’s over. She lets the fire burn down, closes the tent, and settles down for the night, thinking of Chloe’s tears. Just before she’s about to drift into an uneasy sleep, Chloe speaks up.

“I’ll go with you,” she mumbles into her pillow. “To Arcadia. Your family. Wherever.”

“Really?” Kate asks, shifting closer to her.

“What else am I gonna do?”

Kate feels a chill in the air. So she picks up her own pillow and lays down beside Chloe, throwing both blankets over them, wrapping an arm around Chloe’s waist.

“You could do whatever you want,” Kate whispers. “But I’m glad you’re coming with me.”

Chloe doesn’t respond except to shuffle closer into Kate’s embrace. Kate clings to Chloe all through the night.


	5. Far Too Dark

Chloe rolls over and blinks the sleep out of her eyes. Kate’s up already, unusual for her, but something seems to be on her mind. She’s sitting in the corner of the tent with her little calendar out, and she scratches an X into today with her quill. She purses her lips and stares at the page.

She glances around and catches Chloe’s eye. “Today’s when I’m supposed to set out,” she says, laying down her quill and stuffing the calendar back in her bag. “To head for Arcadia.”

Chloe turns away, her stomach dropping. She knew this was coming. The end of her little druid adventure. She should just go. Thank Kate for the charm and return to what she does best until something finally kills her. It’s not like she has anything to offer Kate or her people but failure.

“So...” Kate pauses, putting the calendar back in her satchel. “Do you want to?”

“Want to what?”

“Go back to Arcadia. I’d understand if you don’t. I can just head back home. But it’s time for us to move on.” Kate scoots over and touches Chloe’s shoulder. “But I want to...to see if we can find anyone. So you’ll know.”

Chloe shivers. She does want to know. She doesn’t deserve to know. She doesn’t deserve to be alive after abandoning everyone to the death she’d tried to welcome. Even if anyone is alive, even if the town survived, she shouldn’t go back.

But when she turns back over to tell Kate that, she finds that she can’t. Kate looks so worried. Her face is all twisted up, the way it gets when she’s listening to Chloe whine about her life. She wants Chloe to go. Maybe that matters more than Chloe’s own desires. Maybe making Kate happy is enough.

Chloe sits up and sighs. “Sure. But how, um, how are you planning to get there? Shit, I have no idea how you got out here in the first place.”

“Oh! It’s a simple little tool, really,” Kate replies, reaching over Chloe and digging into her witch’s bag. She draws out a carved piece of stone, side smooth, flat sides leading to a point. The back of it, what looks like a perfect hexagon, has a blue rune sitting squarely in its center and glowing faintly. As Kate lets it rest in her open palms, it spins and wobbles, centering itself once it’s found a direction it seems to like.

“The hell is that?” Chloe asks, poking the thing.

“Us druids can enchant all sorts of objects with Fortan’s blessing. He gave us many powers when we first made our covenant with him, all bent on survival. This is a dowsing stone or rod. Without instruction, it just points you towards the nearest nexus of magical energy, following the ley lines,” Kate explains. “But if I just...” She sets down the stone and draws out Chloe’s knife from her bag. She cuts one quick slash across her palm and picks up the stone with that bloodied hand, gripping it tightly.

“Show me to Arcadia,” she whispers.

The blood crawls up the sides of the stone while Chloe stares, vanishing as it touches the lines of the rune. It glows brightly until the last droplet touches it. It flashes, and Kate lays her palms out again. It spins and points in an entirely different direction.

“That’ll do it. The enchantment will hold until we reach Arcadia,” Kate informs her.

“Neat toy,” Chloe grumbles. Shit. That makes it all too easy. It feels like they shouldn’t be able to just...go. Like Arcadia should be wiped off of any map. To Chloe, it seems like it should’ve totally vanished, that nothing should be left, because that’s what it felt like when she wandered the Wilds.

But Kate wants her to go back. So she’ll go. For whatever it’s worth.

 

* * *

 

They spend most of the morning taking down the campsite, rolling up the bedroll, folding up the tent around its poles. Kate says she’s grateful that they can split the load; apparently coming out here was ‘slow-going’ in her words. Chloe’s happy to take the tent; while it’s heavy, she suspects she’s gained a bit more muscle than Kate has over the past few months. The only part she can see being a problem is the extra width it affords her, remembering some of the denser sections of the Marshlands and the Sunless Forest.

Still, the work of packing everything up enough to load onto their backs is a good distraction from the task they’re preparing for. Chloe doesn’t think about what she’ll find there, she thinks of managing space and weight and making sure they have enough food. Kate begrudgingly admits they’ll probably have to eat some tainted things; Chloe’s lost her last patch of scales by now, though, so the charms will keep them safe.

Chloe fills their waterskins at the pool. Staring down into that water, she thinks of how much she’ll miss her baths with Kate, washing one another’s hair, relaxing in the warm water and thinking of nothing but comfort and safety. _Or maybe you’ll just miss seeing her naked,_ a voice in her head tells her, and she wants to stuff her head under the surface and drown.

Kate can’t know. She can’t learn how she makes Chloe feel, when she wraps an arm around Chloe at night. She can’t figure out what Chloe dreams about when she’s not having nightmares of the Wilds or Rachel’s body in the dark; fantasies of Kate’s lips on hers, their bodies against one another, their fingers intertwined. Kate deserves better than Chloe. Kate could never want Chloe, not after how they met, what Chloe’s said, what she’s been. And Chloe can’t inflict herself on Kate, not even more than she already has. Kate doesn’t need to deal with _this_ on top of trying to turn Chloe into something worthwhile, doesn’t need this extra layer of complications. Chloe will never say anything about it. How could she?

Besides, the last time she loved someone, she got her killed.

She returns to the center circle just as Kate straps her bedroll and witch’s bag to her back. Chloe adds one waterskin to her load, then starts to work on getting the tent on herself. Kate fusses around her, tightening knots, adjusting the straps. Finally, it feels like there’s nothing left to do. Everything that once resided in this circle is on their backs. Chloe stares at the standing stones.

Kate lightly touches her shoulder. “Are you ready?” she asks, gripping the dowsing stone in her hand.

Chloe tries to respond, but not much comes out. She’s thinking of leaving this safe haven, where sunlight warms her skin every morning, where the grass is green, where the food tastes like food rather than rot, where she met Kate and took back control of her own body. She’s thinking about going back to where the sun is a vague memory and nothing but polluted and diffuse light shows the way, where monsters prowl, where people go to die. She’s thinking about seeing her home reduced to that.

Kate hugs her, hands slipping under the bundle on Chloe’s back. Chloe hugs her back, grateful not to have to say anything.

“It’s all right,” Kate says as she pulls back after what feels like too long and not nearly long enough. “We’ll be okay.”

Chloe nods. “Yeah. Sure.”

Kate takes her hand as they leave the clearing, holding the rod in one open palm to guide them. Chloe spares one last look at the sunlit grass before the dark trees of the Wilds block it off forever.

 

* * *

 

“Watch it.” Chloe puts an arm out to stop Kate, staring down into the vines ahead of them. She can see the slight ripple of water beneath them, and she knows what lurks there. She’s seen this kind of thing before. “Don’t take another step.”

“Why—Oh! Yes, I’d hate to get all wet,” Kate says, smoothing back her hair nervously.

“Not that.” Chloe crouches down and jams her hand between two vines, sending fire through her bones and boiling the water. “C’mon, buddy. C’mon.”

“Chloe, what are you—”

It comes bursting through the vines, tangling itself in them as it screams and flails its needle-like claws. Its hair is seaweed, flopping wetly through the air as it violently shakes, no doubt unable to understand where to go with its pool bubbling and two charmed people standing above the water. Chloe stares at its blue scales, its black eyes. Another thing she could’ve become. She wonders if her hair was protected from the corruption by Rachel’s spell; the seaweed looks dreadfully slimy.

The creature grasps blindly in the air until it grabs a branch, hauling itself up out of the water. A mass of tangled kelp still ties its lower body to the pool, extending from somewhere far beneath the surface. Chloe can see where its legs merged together to form that tapered tail, the umbilical cord that connects it to its haunt. Chloe lights up her other hand and severs the connection.

“I told you, kelpies hate that,” Chloe says with a smirk as the monster lets out one final groan and hangs limply from the tree. Kate stares open-mouthed at the creature.

“You’re lucky you didn’t fall in one of those on your way here,” Chloe tells her as she freezes the pool so they can walk over it. “Saw a guy wander off the roads once, checking out some weird plants or something. He walked into one of these pools. The charm killed the kelpie, but only after it...panicked, and stabbed him in the throat. When you’re down there, the two of you are trapped with each other. It’s...” Chloe shudders at the memory of her first plunge into a kelpie pit. “Not a way you want to die.”

“It’s...it’s dead, right?” Kate asks, staring up at the corpse.

“It can’t hurt us. I think...I think they can actually regenerate. I’ve seen some kelpies that weren’t even part human. There’s this big ball of kelp down there,” Chloe says, pointing as they carefully inch across the pond, “that the human part’s connected to, and I think it...can re-grow a new body. Eventually. I’m just guessing, I’m no Wilds expert.”

“By the gods,” Kate murmurs. “I thought my charm would keep me safe...”

“I mean, I haven’t had to kill any bats yet, so it is,” Chloe says with a shrug. “Just be careful as we get closer to the Marshlands. Arcadia’s right between them and the Sunless Forest.”

Kate nods. “I remember.” Once they’re over the ice, Kate takes Chloe’s hand, squeezing tightly. “Thank you.”

Chloe looks down at her. “For what?”

“You’re protecting me.” Kate smiles at her. “I knew you would. If you hadn’t been here...”

“Pfft, what? You made it out here to begin with, you’d be fine,” Chloe says, waving her off. “And you didn’t even grow fur! Totally badass, you’d conquer the Wilds just fine.”

“But I almost—”

“That’s just ‘cuz you’re distracted by my hotness,” Chloe says with a smirk. _Did you really just say that? Stop talking to her like she’s Rachel,_ she scolds herself. She clears her throat as Kate clams up. “Anyway. We need to find somewhere to camp for the night.” 

When they do, and Chloe settles down for the night, Kate holds Chloe and keeps feeding her stupid ideas with her closeness, her repetition of thanks for all the guiding that Chloe is doing. Chloe hates her dreams that night. She hates them most of the time.

 

* * *

 

The journey is so quiet compared to what Chloe remembers. The monsters stay out of sight for the most part, except for when Chloe takes off her charm and runs off by herself for an hour or so each day to find some meat for herself while Kate searches for fruits and berries to purify with her druidic rituals. Kate claims they’ll be in Arcadia in a week, which seems insane, but then, Chloe probably wandered in big circles for months. It’s not like the Wilds are filled with landmarks, and she wasn’t really going anywhere anyway.

It’s not until they come across the barn that it sinks in.

Chloe freezes in place the second she sees it, unconsciously sending out sensory waves through the ground until she feels the little fake protective circle she’d risen around Rachel’s body, so long ago. She’s here. She’s back. She can even feel the entombed corpses of Nathan and Jefferson beneath the building.

“Chloe?” Kate asks, stopping in her tracks. “What’s—”

“This is where they killed her,” Chloe says through grit teeth, anger flaring in her heart, making itself known in smoke pouring from her palms. “This is where everything went to shit.” She remembers how she used to calm this rage. The way she’d form a torch and sear her skin. But she can’t do that in front of Kate. She’d worry and maybe cry and maybe beg her not to and she can’t hurt Kate like that.

Instead she hurls a fireball into the side of the barn. It’s not fair that it survived if nothing else did. But she knows they’re far from the actual lines of Arcadia’s wards. Kate jumps back, but says nothing, just takes hold of Chloe’s hand and rubs her thumb over it.

“Everything else around here is too wet to catch,” Chloe tells Kate. Kate just nods, still holding the dowsing stone and letting it guide them further.

They exit the Wilds into the former grounds of Blackwell Academy.

Chloe recognizes it right away, despite the vines covering everything, the way the ground’s sunken under the buildings and shifted them, the saplings of bog trees beginning to sprout. There’s Rachel’s dormitory, there’s the old lecture hall, there’s the headmaster’s office. A pack of werewolves spot them, howl, and run off down the overgrown road towards the center of town.

And everywhere, covering every inch of the ground, red-and-white flowers bloom, their petals towards the sky.


	6. Lost Frontier

Chloe walks the campus as if in a daze, crushing vampire blooms beneath her feet as she stares at this once-familiar place, slowly being reclaimed by the endless rage of the Old Gods. It’s not as bad as she would’ve thought. She remembers fire, but here, all the buildings seem largely intact, the only damage being done by the softening of the ground and the constrictions of the vines. As she steps towards the dormitories, something tingles on her skin.

She kneels down, seeking out the sensation with her fingers, and touches a thin line of black ash. Something flashes through her mind and she jumps back.

“Chloe?” Kate asks, coming up behind her.

“That ash, there...” Chloe murmurs, pointing. “Is that...”

Kate crouches and touches it. “I can’t say for sure, but I think this is spent warding powder,” Kate says. “Normally it’s got some blue flecks in it, like what I’ve got in my bag, but after it’s been used...”

“That’s what it felt like. Like...” Chloe swallows. “Like this was the last stand. It was like...a ghost of a feeling. I dunno. Must be the whole sorcerer thing acting up.”

“The preparations for a real ward require a lot of time, but with just the powder, you can make a barrier that’ll hold for a few hours while you set up the main ritual,” Kate tells her. “My dad taught me how to do it before I left, just in case.”

Chloe stares at the front door of the building, imagining the students making their last effort to withstand the Wilds. Did they make it out? Did anyone? If she goes in there, will it be empty, or full of familiar rotting faces?

She came here for answers, after all.

Kate follows silently as Chloe steps over the line. The enchantment’s clearly lingering in the air, but it hasn’t stopped the vines. It’s more like when Chloe and Rachel would hang out in the refuse pile, where people dumped their failed spell components. Untethered magic, beginning to fade.

She pushes in the door and finds nothing beyond. Each hallway and dorm room they check is the same. No bodies. Not even signs of battle. Just the vines, crawling into every crack, collapsing archways and leaving doors on the floor. Rachel’s room is as empty as the night Chloe fled. No flowers bloom in here.

“I would be here,” Kate whispers as they pass a door. She brushes her fingers over the number plaque. “This would’ve been my room. We’d paid for it.”

“Blackwell was a shithole anyway,” Chloe spits. “Let’s get out of here.”

Kate grabs her as she starts to turn back towards the exit.

“Are you all right?” she asks.

“Fine. I told you. I thought it would be like this. This was pointless.”

Kate shrinks away from her. “I’m sorry,” she says, her voice small. “I—I’d hoped...”

“Hoped what? That I’m a _complete_ moron and I didn’t know what was happening behind me?” Chloe angrily tears herself out of Kate’s grip. She starts stalking down the hall. “No. That would mean I didn’t fuck something up for a change. That I didn’t leave this place to die.”

“Chloe—”

Chloe slams open the door and walks back out onto the campus, crushing flowers beneath her feet. She’s burning up again. She can feel it. She’s had her powers under control for so long, none of these violent episodes, none of this fire crawling up from her palms and burning up the sleeves of her dress. Because she hasn’t felt this strongly, maybe. Because despair had replaced anger, deadened her to her own emotions, and right now she wishes she’d just stayed in the fucking Wilds and let herself turn into—

“Chloe!”

Kate runs out of the dorms, stopping just short of touching Chloe. “Chloe, don’t,” she whispers, reaching out. “Please.”

Kate is so beautiful. So kind. So patient. Chloe never should have run into her. She didn’t deserve to. Look at this fucking wasteland she let happen. Look at who she is, who she’s always been. Kate shouldn’t be wasting her time.

But Kate’s fingertips are so soft on Chloe’s cheek. Her green eyes so fearful. Chloe can’t do this, not here, not in front of her. She can’t make Kate suffer like that. She knows what it’s like to see someone you care about reduced to nothing.

She closes her eyes, counts, breathes. The flames subside, fading back into her palms. Kate hugs her, squeezing tight.

“You-you scared me, Chloe,” Kate whispers. “I—I’ve heard the most awful things about sorcerers...what they can do to themselves on accident...”

Chloe freezes. She could say, _it’s not going to be an accident. I know what I’m doing._ But Kate shouldn’t, can’t know that. She can’t worry this nice little druid girl any more than she already has.

She just slides out of Kate’s embrace and starts down the road to the center of town. “Got one more place to check,” she mumbles as Kate jogs to catch up.

 

* * *

 

So this is where the fire happened.

They wander the vined streets slowly, Chloe turning her head and marking every house of everyone she’d ever known, torched. Most of them are barely even recognizable, blackened husks where homes once stood. The vampire blooms thrive here, too.

The monsters that must live here scatter audibly as they head for Chloe’s destination, always staying out of sight. Chloe wonders if any of them were people that she knew. Probably not. Anyone who was here that night would’ve been killed, not converted. Still, the image of David, pale-skinned and red-eyed, fangs dripping with blood, floats through her mind.

Then, as they’re just about to turn the corner to where Chloe needs to check, she hears something. A low, guttural growl, grumbling from somewhere above them. Chloe instinctively shields Kate, controlled burns flaring in her palms.

“What was that?” Kate asks, but Chloe shushes her, scanning the street around them. It seems quiet, empty, but then she spots a glint of gold shining from the second-story window of the old town hall. The roof’s been burned away a long time ago, and as Chloe focuses her gaze, a long, serpentine neck rises above the walls, the spiny scaled head of a dragon turning to face them.

“It’s still here,” Chloe whispers, clenching her fists.

“By the gods,” Kate whispers, backing away from the dragon’s orange-eyed gaze. It doesn’t even seem frightened by the charms around their necks, but that’s not surprising. Chloe’s met these things before. She’d heard whispers that this is the final stage of a salamander, that this is what happens after a century of transformation. If it’s been alive that long, no doubt it knows what its limits are. What it can and can’t eat.

“It won’t bother us,” Chloe says. The dragon bears its teeth and snorts at them before laying its head back beneath the wall. “It just won’t abandon its hoard.”

The last hoard she’d come across had been quite something, a pile of treasures hidden in a cave. That dragon had been old and scarred and weathered and it had fallen before Chloe just like every other thing in the Wilds that should’ve killed her.

Chloe turns away. She feels something burning inside her, thinking of that dragon and all the pieces of wealth it probably scraped out of this town, ripped from the hands and houses of the dead. But she came out here to find answers, and it’s just a beast. Doing what the corruption compels it to do.

But when she finds what she’s looking for, all those excuses stop working.

They stop in front of Chloe’s house, or what was Chloe’s house. It’s unrecognizable. A pile of blackened wood and charcoal. She shifts through it anyway, throws beams and debris off what might’ve once been the first floor with bursts of wind while Kate watches, shrinking away from Chloe’s rage. But there’s nothing here. Not one scrap of the life she’d left to burn.

The flames start building again as she spots the scattered shiny shards of the crystal ball she’d shattered on her last night here, in another fit of stupid, destructive rage. Kate whispers Chloe’s name, but Chloe can’t hear her, can’t understand her, can’t _think._ It’s all gone. It’s all gone, and it’s her fault, because she didn’t stay and fight.

She should incinerate herself. Add to the piles of ash. But Kate’s standing right there, begging her to calm down, and Chloe won’t subject her to that. Instead, she’s going to do what she should’ve done months ago.

She subdues the firestorm for a moment. She breathes. Kate starts to approach her, but Chloe looks past her, towards the old town hall. She takes the charm off from around her neck and hands it to Kate.

“Chloe, you can’t just take it off, please—” Kate stammers, thrusting the charm at her.

“Just give me a few minutes.” Chloe lifts herself into the air, leaving a panicked Kate behind and shouting after her, clutching the charm to her chest.

She soars and stops herself, floating just above the dragon atop its enormous haul. It must've scraped every cold coin out of every pocket in the town, along with all the gems from the magic shops. Chloe even recognizes a few pieces from her and Rachel’s old hideout. The dragon’s eyes snap open as Chloe squares her shoulders and readies herself.

“Hey! Fuckface!” she calls, igniting one fist. “Try me.”

“Chloe, what are you—” echoes from behind her, but the dragon’s irritated snort interrupts her as its long neck rises up, surveying her. Chloe clenches her fist. It bares its teeth, large and curved as sickles. Chloe can feel the fire rising in its throat from here.

“Get up off your lazy ass and fight!” Chloe shouts.

It belches one enormous fireball in her direction, like it’s trying to swat a fly. Chloe holds out a hand, stops it midflight, then whirls it around and smashes it right in the dragon’s face.

That gets its attention.

It reels back from the explosion, coins scattering in every direction as it uncurls its legs and stands to its full height, wings flaring out from its back. As it starts to take off, screaming in Chloe’s direction and spattering her body with black bile, Chloe reaches out and feels its blood.

It rushes through the dragon’s veins, sick and thick and hot. Chloe can sense the rage beginning to swell in the beast she just awoke from its half-sleep. It’s ready to kill her, ready to chomp down on her body and crunch the bones in its teeth. Just as it leaps towards her, Chloe takes hold of all the blood she can feel.

And she boils it.

The dragon projects a stream of fire along with its scream, but Chloe just holds up her other hand and directs it to flow around her, untouchable by the rage of this creature, this monster, this thing she could have _killed_ and stopped from burning this town to the ground. At first it tries to get away, fly out of Chloe’s range, but the wind twists around it and keeps it in place until it can’t summon the strength to beat its wings any longer. The dragon falls to the ground, screaming and thrashing, belting out flames as it writhes. Chloe's control grows, more and more of the dragon's blood under her control the longer she focuses. Chloe sees Kate fearfully duck behind what’s left of a chimney as the dragon flails, its huge claws swiping down what’s left of the ruins, trying to reach up to Chloe.

Chloe drops right in front of it, still holding out her hand and watching as the dragon cries pitifully.

It’s time to end this.

She clenches her fist.

The dragon’s veins burst and it practically explodes, spattering the ground around it with tainted blood. All that remains intact are its smoking black bones, rocking gently on the dirt in the middle of a sea of black and red, scraps of scales and organs splattered across the nearby walls, all down Chloe’s dress, the taste of rotten meat in her mouth.

She falls to her knees before the gory sight as Kate steps out from her hiding place. She stares silently as Kate rushes over, grabbing her by the shoulders, asking if she’s all right.

But it’s gone. Everything’s gone. There is nothing and no one left in Arcadia, and it’s Chloe’s fault, and now she knows, absolutely, she could’ve saved them. Could’ve saved everyone. Instead, she ran. Instead, she wasted the gift Rachel worked so hard to give her.

She brings her hands up to her face and sobs, tears running streaks through black blood.

 

* * *

 

They make camp at the shore of the lake that marks Arcadia’s western border, Chloe clearing the vines away with fire. Kate takes her dress to the water, sprinkles warding powder into the water to cleanse it while Chloe warms herself with a fire thrown from her hand. She hasn’t spoken to Kate since they walked away from the dragon’s corpse. What’s there to say? Nothing Kate wants to hear. Nothing anyone wants to hear.

Chloe wraps herself in one of Kate’s spare robes while she waits, stoking the fire and thinking. What’s there to say? What’s there to do?

Kate comes back after a while, hanging up her dress on a tree branch to dry. She sits beside Chloe, biting her lip, trying to say something. Chloe’s not sure she can stand hearing it.

“It’s not your fault,” Kate whispers, finally, reaching her hand out and touching Chloe’s knee. “None of it is.”

“Of course it is,” Chloe replies sullenly, thrusting her hand out and causing the fire to flare brightly in the night. “It all has to be connected, right? My powers, the wards...and I didn’t use them for anything good. You saw what I can do. If I’d just stayed...”

“Did you even know how to use your powers that well when the wards fell?” Kate asks. “Or was that all...practice, in the Wilds?”

“I killed a dragon before.”

“After how much practice?”

Chloe clams up. She doesn’t want to take the blame off of herself, doesn’t want to tell Kate that her first dragon kill was after over a month of constant fighting in the Wilds, seeking out the strongest monsters she could find. Maybe she would’ve died like everyone else. Panicking. Maybe she wasn’t thinking clearly because of what she saw beneath that barn. But if it’s not her fault, then what is it? Why did the wards fall? Why did Rachel have to die?

“You don’t deserve to have this weighing on your mind,” Kate says, shifting closer. “You deserve better. You...you should have the chance to live a normal life. You should be...” She stops on her next words.

Chloe gives up. She just sighs. “I wish I could ask her,” she mutters, flicking a tiny fireball into the pit. “I wish I knew fucking anything. I wish she’d ever talked to me about...whatever she was doing to make these spells for me. I thought she loved me, but...maybe she never really did. Maybe I was just a convenient test subject. She had such big plans.” Chloe curls up her limbs. “I wish I could talk to her.”

“Um...” Kate looks away. “Maybe you could.”

Chloe turns to her. “What?”

“It—it’d be a diplomatic nightmare, but...there’s this old ritual we druids used to do. To ask advice from our elders after they’d passed on,” Kate explains, fidgeting with her hands. “You need to use the ley nexus to the south.”

Chloe’s heart pounds in her chest as she stares at Kate. “How is that possible?” she asks.

“It’s not just magic that travels along ley lines. Spirits do, too, and the nexus is where they linger before Tria takes them home,” Kate rushes out, bouncing her knee. “It’s — an Oracle owns it now, but if we explain it — if we tell them it’s to learn what happened here, we might be able to—”

 _“How?"_  Chloe asks, grabbing Kate by the shoulders.

“I don’t know the ritual!” Kate squeaks, shrinking in Chloe’s manic grip. “It’s, I just know this old song...”

Chloe releases her and turns back to the fire, breathing heavily.

 _"Tie a knife with a ribbon, with a red, red ribbon,_ ” Kate sings under her breath.

Chloe stares at her.

“ _Raise a hand-held mirror to the light of the moon..._ ” Chloe can see her struggling for the next words. Their eyes meet, Kate swallows, and she tries again with, _“In a secret garden, with a heart unhardened, strike a specter’s bargain with a ritual brew._ ”

“There’s one more part...” Kate murmurs, looking away. “Um...I know this, I know this... _Book and candle is natural to those pure and simple._ That’s the last one, and then you just start it over again. We sing it when we’re raising protection circles, or um, when the elders are getting drunk around the campfire.”

Chloe turns the words over in her mind. Hardly a specific instruction manual. But if an Oracle owns the place now, there’s probably plenty of spellbooks around. It’s enough to find answers. On her own.

“It hasn’t been cast in a generation. The Magister thinks enhanced divination is more important,” Kate says, a slightly bitter tone in her voice. “The nexus used to be a Druidic secret. It was ours. We were afraid it would get corrupted, that we wouldn’t be able to use it anymore, if people found out. And they did, and they took it from us.” Kate picks up a pebble and tosses it into the fire. “But...I’m supposed to be an ambassador. I can convince the Oracle if I go with the Delegation, I know it. We can find out what happened, Chloe.” She reaches over and takes Chloe’s hand. “Together.”

Chloe stops breathing, because this is too close. Too warm. Too intimate, especially as Kate intertwines their fingers. “Chloe, I...” she begins, shuffling closer so their shoulders are touching. She swallows nervously as Chloe shifts to face her, instead, their hands still linked across their laps. “I feel like I’ve hurt you, bringing you back here, and I’m sorry, but I don’t want you to run away again, I want you to stay, I can’t imagine...losing you to that world out there. I want to know you’ll be all right, and the only way I know that is if you’re with me, so please, tell me you’ll come back with me. That you’ll let me help you.”

Kate looks so beautiful in the firelight, so open and vulnerable, that Chloe wants to say yes. Wants to tell her that she’ll never leave. But she shouldn’t, can’t force Kate into ‘helping’ her, the way Rachel ‘helped’ her. She’s talking about diplomatic nightmares, explaining the situation to people, and that thought just fills Chloe with fear. What could Kate suffer if she involves herself in Chloe’s life like that? Uprooting her whole future just to satisfy one broken girl?

“Chloe, please,” Kate murmurs, reaching a hand up to cup her cheek. Chloe turns away, standing up, staring at the dirt. Kate wants this. Kate doesn’t know what she wants. She doesn’t understand what Chloe is, no one ever does until it’s too late. Cursed by the gods, probably, bringing nothing but pain and destruction wherever she goes. She should have died in Arcadia. Then she couldn’t be fucking up Kate’s life like this.

“Don’t bother,” Chloe murmurs as Kate rises to follow her. “Just...go. I’ll figure something out on my own. Don’t get involved. You’ll just get hurt. That’s all I do, I let people down.”

Kate steps in front of her, their eyes locking for what feels like too long. “I don’t believe that. I want to be involved. I want to be with you.”

Those words can’t mean what Chloe thinks they mean. That’s impossible.

“Please stay,” Kate says softly, taking Chloe’s hands in her own.

This is impossible. This is so much worse than before.

Kate’s breathing hard. Chloe wonders what’s going through her mind. Is it really like how Chloe felt about Rachel? The confusion, the uncertainty, the knowledge that it isn’t normal? Chloe remembers when it crystallized, when she first saw Rachel kissing a man and knew instantly that she wanted to be in his place. Does Kate really...

Can this be real?

Chloe can’t push the issue, can’t lean down and kiss her and break this moment. She looks away, and Kate quickly lets go of Chloe’s hands. “W-wait,” Kate stammers, turning Chloe’s head back towards her. “I just...I want you to...”

She’s blushing, trying so hard, and Chloe just can’t. She can’t help her work out these feelings because it’s just going to hurt so much more if she does. Chloe tears herself away, walking towards the tent.

“Let’s just go to bed,” Chloe says as Kate follows her. “It’s late.”

“Chloe, don’t just—”

Chloe flips the flap and tucks herself under the blanket, curling up away from the entrance in the fetal position. _Don’t look at me like that. Don’t touch me like that. I don’t deserve you._

She has to leave tomorrow. Or tonight. Kate can’t do this.

But when Kate does come in, she wraps herself around Chloe anyway, shaking fearfully. “Don’t go,” she whispers. “Please don’t go. I’m sorry I brought you here, I—”

Chloe lets out an annoyed grunt and rolls over. “Kate, you didn’t ask for any of this. You just had the bad luck to run into me, all right? You’re...” Chloe sighs, flopping onto her back and staring at the darkness above her. “You’re better than I deserve.”

“I don’t believe that,” Kate replies.

“It’s the truth.”

Kate tugs at her shoulder and she rolls over again, only now their faces are _way_ too close and—

Kate does it. She puts an arm around Chloe’s waist and pulls her close and her lips are soft and her kiss is light but it is certain. “Stay,” she asks, squeezing Chloe tighter.

She’s made it worse. She’s made it as bad as it can possibly be.

Chloe feels the tears rolling down her cheeks, and Kate does too, because she keeps trying to kiss them away, says wonderful and kind things, telling her she’s beautiful, she should stay, she deserves happiness. But Chloe can’t help but feel sick as she returns the affection, it feels good but it shouldn’t, Chloe has never and will never deserve such love. From anyone.

They pass into sleep tangled in each other, but when Chloe awakens, she knows she can’t do this anymore.

She quietly extracts herself from Kate’s arms. “Chloe?” Kate mumbles sleepily.

“Go back to sleep. I’ll be back soon,” Chloe lies. She crawls across the tent and finds Kate’s satchel.

She takes her knife back.

She takes a small, spare dowsing rod.

She steps outside and shudders at the cold. The dowsing stone spins in her hand and points the way. She pulls idly at the charm on her neck, but she leaves it in place. If she’s going to get her answers, if she’s going to find out how bad she really is, she needs to stay sane.

She starts walking.

She doesn’t look back.


End file.
